Pressed for time

 There was a point in time growing up that I almost became a paperboy. This quickly faded as the prospects of delivering papers at 4AM before school were enough to politely decline the opportunity. I am not a morning person, waking up that early in the morning is physically painful. Ironically, I'm now an AM News director who routinely wakes up at 2AM for his shift. The point being, print media was very popular in a big way. Technology has a way of shaking things up, though.

Credit: FOX 61


To highlight this, back in 2004 a study was performed to see why young Finnish citizens still preferred print media over their digital counterparts (Hujanen & Pietikäinen, 2004). Yes, digital print was still in its early years but the fact that a study like this was performed at all speaks volumes about where we were as a content consumer then, compared to now. Look at the Hartford Courant. It's the country's oldest continuously published newspaper that once had a newsroom buzzing with almost 400 staff (Gosselin, 2011). Now? The courant building houses Fox affiliate Fox61, and CW affiliate CW20, and that's it. The newsroom is closed. The printing has been outsourced to Springfield, Massachusetts (Associated Press, 2020). The building is a graveyard. Print media couldn't compete with 24/7 news cycles and instant digital publication. Why wait for a morning paper when you can pull up an article on your phone in seconds? Even the Courant conceded to making their newspaper available digitally online: https://www.courant.com/.


References

Associated Press. (2020, October 19). Hartford Courant to outsource newspaper's printing. Retrieved from FOX 61: https://www.fox61.com/article/money/business/hartford-courant-to-outsource-newspapers-printing/520-5a748ca5-7e43-47fe-8ed1-65750407b70f

Gosselin, K. R. (2011, July 7). Courant Trims Newsroom Jobs. Retrieved from Hartford Courant: https://www.courant.com/business/hc-xpm-2011-07-07-hc-layoffs-courant-20110707-story.html

Hujanen, J., & Pietikäinen, S. (2004, 6). Interactive uses of journalism: Crossing between technological potential and young people's news-using practices. New Media & Society, 6(3), 383-401. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=2004-15592-005&site=eds-live&scope=site 

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